Marketing Strategies That Will Win For The New DecadeA three-pronged approach to allow your marketing to thrive in the 2020s. Article By Steven Picanza Of Latin & Code
Article reprinted from Sound & Communications, January 2020

New year...
new decade... same old marketing strategies?

Regardless of whether you actually kept your 2020
marketing-planning meeting on the books, all isn't lost. The amazing thing is,
the impassable mountain called "marketing" that's sitting in front of you
is actually an optical illusion; in reality, it's just a bunch of smaller
hills. Each is challenging in its own way, but each can easily be conquered with
the right mindset, tools, strategies and teams.

Having the right mindset is a challenge unto itself. (To aid
you, I recommend reading Ego Is The Enemy, by Ryan Holiday.) More
generally, though, having the right tools, strategies and teams has become
essential to your brand's and your marketing strategy's overall success.

Over the next year, those things are exactly what
we're
going to talk about in the "Marketing AV" column. My goal is to ensure that,
no matter how large an organization you work with, you have the right
strategies, tools and resources to conquer your marketing challenges.

Your marketing  just like your home or office, or even a
project plan  starts at a foundational level: the blueprint. Before you select
window dressings or the type of carpet, you first must think about and document
the dimensions of the space...consider its size and contours.

This is where we're going to start  with the blueprint.

What follows are three ways to stay ahead of your marketing,
starting from the ground level, so you can focus on what you do best: grow your
business and create amazing experiences for your clients.

Create A Concrete FoundationI once knew a creative director who always said, "Skyscrapers are not built in the
sand." That has stuck with me ever since.
You have brand aspirations and goals to reach. You have customers to serve and
shareholders to whom to answer. It's important to reassure all parties that
your brand, your business and your marketing strategies are all aligned.

These stakeholders in your brand have to know that it
isn't
built on quicksand, but, rather, is built on a foundation of concrete  one
that's ready to withstand even the deepest reverberations.

When we talk about your brand purpose or true north, what
we're really talking about are the foundational elements of your brand and its
ability to navigate back to center when it gets off course. If you create a
foundation like this, your marketing will become the gasoline fueling your very
own eternal flame.

Invest In The Right Teams And ResourcesIt goes without saying that today's marketing can be a
many-headed beast. Even the smallest organizations have to invest in the right
internal and external teams to perform at the highest level. And let's face
it: More often than not, the job requires multiple people, running at multiple
speeds, trying to deliver multiple positive marketing touchpoints.

To do this right takes more than one person. It takes more
than just an intern or somebody's friend who can run social media. It takes
coordination, the necessary time to experiment and a laser-like focus on the end
goal.

Ultimately, your marketing organization might become something
like a sports team. The CMO or Marketing Director serves in the role of coach,
navigating personalities, cultures and skill sets, while also answering everyone's favorite business questions concerning return on investment (ROI),
the financials and how to save money. All those factors, taken together with the
latest technological advances and toolsets to explore, can be genuinely
overwhelming.

At times, marketers can feel like a hamster scrambling on a
wheel. Want to know how to get off that wheel? Don't be swayed by bright,
shiny objects; instead, stay focused on the tasks that are going to help you
achieve your marketing goals.

I recommend starting with your core conversion points. (These
might be email subscription or contact forms on your website and social-media
channels, or they might tie into your live-event strategy.) Then, you should
figure out the basic combination of tools necessary to achieve success.

Because toolsets  essentially, your "marketing
stack"
 can be overwhelming in their own right, it's important to spend time
talking to these companies and ensuring they (a) are aligned with your brand
vision and (b) add real value and not just vanity. Getting wrapped up in "that's cool to
have" is exactly where brands get into trouble.

If you put the right team in place, using the right stack,
under the right leadership, while adhering to the right expectations, you'll
be well on your way to creating a dynasty like the Chicago Bulls of the 1990s.

Think Like A Disrupter; Act Like A ScientistA few years back, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg said, "Move
fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast
enough." That might be a great technology quote, but it can be an even better
marketing quote.

After all, in the end, it's a straight-up, scrappy,
startup-like "all hands on deck" mentality that works. This mindset  one
in which you're thinking like a disrupter and acting like a scientist  is
necessary to have a successful marketing program that rewards you with sales and
brand loyalty.

"Launch fast, fail fast, adapt
faster" is what we often say when talking about a marketing process. The only way to learn what
doesn't work for your specific brand is to make mistakes, disrupt the status quo of whats always been done and see what sticks when you throw it against the wall.

So, as we embark together on the third decade of the
millennium, I pose a question that should fuel us all moving forward: How can
your marketing be a tremendous asset that turns visitors into leads and turns
clients into evangelists, rather than being a time-sucking, never-ending abyss
that seems never to foster sales? A question for the ages....

Enjoy the Music.com would like to thank Sound & Communications for allowing us to reprint this article.
This article, written by Steven Picanza of Latin & Code, is republished with
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